Custodian interviews are a hugely important part of discovery. This terrific article from CloudNine discusses best practices for conducting them!

As they discuss in their article titled (wait for it!) Custodian Interviews: Critical to Defensible eDiscovery in the Age of Modern Communications, written by Rick Clark of CloudNine and Melissa Weberman of Arnold & Porter and available here, custodian interviews—early interviews of key employees who hold relevant electronically stored information (ESI) —remain a cornerstone for defensible discovery.

Even with today’s advanced analytics and AI tools, a thorough custodian interview can provide a major advantage in saving costs and managing discovery risks. As the volume and variety of corporate communication methods evolve—ranging from traditional email to short-messaging apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and Signal—attorneys should consider sharpening their custodian interview techniques to identify and preserve relevant ESI. The stakes are high: poor interview and collection strategies can result in spoliation, sanctions, and reputational damage.

Custodian interviews serve multiple critical purposes in litigation, including identifying where relevant data lives, including on personal devices or unofficial “shadow IT” apps—i.e., any tool employees use for work without the company’s formal IT approval or retention controls (e.g., personal Dropbox, WhatsApp, or a private Slack workspace). This ensures no major source of evidence is overlooked early on.

So, what other purposes do custodian interviews serve? And what other best practices are there for conducting them? Find out here, it’s only one click! If you interview me, I’ll tell you the same thing! 😉

So, what do you think? How does your organization conduct custodian interviews? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Microsoft Designer, using the term “robot lawyer interviewing a robot employee in an office”.

Disclosure: CloudNine is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.